I've been chugging along very slowly on a Newcastle save, only about half way through second season so far. Currently bobbing up and down between 4th and 7th place in the premier league around February....things are fairly tight from 3rd down to 8th. We've got a great attacking record, but also by far the worst goals conceded in the Top 10...defenders a priority in the next summer window.
Just wanted to throw in a couple of recommendations for midfield signings.
Dani Ceballos from Real Betis as a playmaker. I originally tried to sign Marco Asensio from Real madrid between first and second season, had a bid accepted but then Bayern Munich matched our offer and there was no chance he'd pick us over them. Scouts then pointed out Ceballos. He's a little younger than Asensio, bags of talent (not sure he's got quite the potential of Asensio, but still plenty to spare), natural at MC or AMC, creative and hard working. Took him a while to get going but he's really starting to shine for me, cost us about £11 million in total.
With Ceballos signed I then went looking for a midfield enforcer really and eventually went for Alfred Duncan at italian club Sassuolo. He's got verything I wanted, good tackling, marking, work rate, determination, fitness, stamina and strength. Also been mr Reliable for us so far, barely any injuries. Natural at Dm or MC, I play him as a ball winning midfielder but he's good as a Box to Box as well.

Soler does look like a good option like Burtanza mentions. I didn't see him till well after January window closed so he haven't signed him yet, but have had scouts watching him for a while now and think I'll definitely pick him up during the summer (assuming no-one else does of course).
Might be worth hanging on to Anita until you see some decent midfield options get loan listed, I sold them both in January but only as neither were willing to discuss a new contract.

Did anyone else have problems in the January transfer window of the first season? I've just had Shelvey demand to be allowed to speak to Everton (even though no bid has come in) and Dummet get stroppy when I turned a bid down from West Brom.
Dummet I'm not so bothered about as looks like Mings might be available, but got a couple potential suitors for Ayoze and Gayle as well.

Have to admit I don't mind ritchie shooting from distance too much, he's got 8 goals for us by end of November so far. Half of those have been smacked in from range. Diame can get tae with his shooting right enough.

I've reached mid November in first season and Mitrovic has yet to play for me, every time he's almost match fit he's picked up another knock.
Our form's taken bit of a wobble as well after Atsu got crocked for 3 months, we've not been quite so effective at breaking teams down without him on the left.

Didn't bother with pre-ordering and the beta this year, in fact I'd intended waiting a bit later in the year and getting this year's FM for myself at Christmas. However saved a bit of money on another purchase today and decided to grab it now.
I started a save with the first window budgets disabled to begin with squad as it is. I'm only a few matches in but the 2 wide men Atsu and Ritchie have definitely been the star performers in attack. Mitrovic was banned at the start obviously, but then picked up a double hernia as soon as he was available for selection, which rather put the kibosh on me planning to play a 4-4-2 formation with him and Ayoze upfront.
So far been playing with a fairly standard 4-2-3-1 and results have been pretty good so far.

I used to post pretty regularly on this forum for a few years (after being a long time lurker), even organised a team thread one year. In the last year or so however I've been a lot less active. This has mostly because I've been playing a lot less FM this time round, so had a lot less to contribute really, not because I wasn't enjoying the game or anything but because I was busier with work and also my gaming habits have changed a bit. Been running regular RPG sessions online for several mates which takes up a lot of times and been playing a lot more variety of games on Steam and the like.
Funnily enough though a couple of other community forums I'm part of had noticed a definite decline in activity as well, seems a lot of folks just preferred reddit and other forms of social media.

There was some other entertainment at Italia 90, Cameroon's adventure especially Roger Milla dumping out Columbia. Toto Schillaci and The Divine Ponytail for Italy. Germany were pretty impressive in the group stages with Lothar at his peak and they had a real feisty encounter with the Dutch on the way to the final.
But a lot of the rest of it was very dull....the final with Argentina is probably still the worst match I've ever sat through. (If I hadn't had money on Germany to win I would have switched off after about 20 minutes).
I also found the next World Cup in '94 pretty dull as well.

I actually quite enjoyed Euro '08, none of the home nations there and there was some real entertaining games.
I remember Cech gifting Turkey the winner in their group match after the Czech Republic had been 2-0 up, lot of pundits writing off Germany going into their game against Portugal in the quarter finals, Arshavin looking amazing for most of the tournament (was it not the Euros that convinced Arsenal to buy him?) and of course Spain.